A FORECAST. 31 



then we shall become aware of a Divine or absolute science in Nature ; 

 we shall at last understand that all objects have a permanent and indis- 

 soluble relation to each other, and shall see their true meaning though 

 not till then. 



Is it possible then that Science, having hitherto and we shall see in 

 time that this process has been really most valuable and important gone 

 outwards from the centre towards the very fringe of Humanity emptying 

 facts as far as possible as it went of all feeling, and reducing itself at last 

 to the most shadowy generalisations on the very verge of sense and non- 

 sense is it possible, I say, that it will now return, and first filling up facts 

 with feeling as far as practicable (that is, by direct and the most living 

 contact with Nature in every form, learning to enter into direct personal 

 sense-relationship with every phenomenon and phase), will so gradually 

 ascend to the great central fact and feeling, and then at last and for the 

 first time become fully conscious of a vast organisation absolutely per- 

 fect and intimately knit from its centre to its utmost circumference (the 

 true cosmos of Man the conceptions of man and god combined) exist- 

 ing inchoate or embryonic in every individual man, animal, plant, or 

 other creature the object of all life, experience, suffering, and toil the 

 ground of all sensation, and the hidden yet proper theme of all thought 

 and study ? 



For this is it possible that Science will, speaking broadly, have to 

 leave the laboratory and become one with Life ; or that the great currents 

 of human life will have to be turned on into these often Augean stables 

 of intellectual pruriency ? the investigation of Nature no longer a matter 

 of the intellect alone, but of patient listening and the quiet eye, and of 

 love and faith, and of all deep human experience, bearing not supercili- 

 ously its weight towards the interpretation of the least phenomenon 

 every "fact" thus deepened to its utmost all experience (rather than 

 experiment) courted, and filial walking with Nature, rather than tearing 

 of veils aside the life of the open air, and on the land and the waters, 

 the companionship of the animals and the trees and the stars, the knowl- 

 edge of their habits at first hand and through individual relationship to 

 them, the recognition of their voices and languages, and listening well 

 what they themselves have to say ; the keenest education of the senses 

 towards the physical powers and elements, and the acceptance of all 

 human experience, without exception till Science become a reality. 



Is it possible that in some sense, instead of reducing each branch of 

 Science to its lowest terms, we shall have to read it in the light of its 

 highest factors, and "take it up " into the Science above that we shall 

 have to take up the mechanical sciences into the physical, the physical 

 into the vital, the vital into the social and ethical, and so forth, before 

 we can understand them ? Is it possible that the phenomena of Chemis- 

 try only find their due place and importance in their relation to living 

 beings and processes ; that the phenomena of Vitality and the laws of 



